Millions Are Spent on Servicing CD Insiders, but True Need Is a Better Public Information System

The Honolulu Advertiser editorializes today on the need to upgrade the state and county Civil Defense centers, but we’re struck once again by what those upgrades would and wouldn't do.

Have you noticed in earlier media coverage that recent Civil Defense expenditures seem to be for tools and toys to keep officials themselves informed, coordinated and linked in? From the editorial:

The city’s center would coordinate the first responders – ambulances, firefighters and the like – and manage traffic on Oahu. The state’s center would monitor and respond to all the counties’ needs with its own resources, including the National Guard.

Just once we’d like to read about what’s being done to upgrade human software in the emergency communications chain. The big failure in October ’06 when two Big Island earthquakes resulted in a prolonged island-wide power outage on Oahu was CD officials’ inability to communicate efficiently with the public. (First-time visitors to CHORE are directed to our summary of the event more than a year after the fact.)

Officials relied on faulty assumptions – that cell phone networks would work in a power emergency, that they could simply call radio stations to convey information to the public, that emergency broadcasters were prepared to react professionally. The public was left uninformed far too long, and the fix for those human lapses is more training for humans, not necessarily more millions for computers and inter-agency communications.

After a prolonged drought, Hawaii can expect storms this winter, so if our Civil Defense officials haven’t trained and retrained on getting the word out, all those millions on electronic gadgets will be a waste.

UH Schedules Another Emergency Alert by Text But Is Silent on Testing Other Crisis Channels

The University of Hawaii has a test planned of its Emergency Notification System that uses text messaging in a few days. We've become more accepting of TM as a way to communicate in a crisis since earlier posts here, now that we're doing quite a bit of texting. But as suggested here many times, a campus emergency notification can't end with text messaging, especially since there’s some evidence that students on other campuses haven't been all that enthused about signing up for emergency alerts.

The University of Hawaii “Guideline for Emergency Communication Policy and Procedure” alludes to “alternate methods of communications” that can be employed, but note how they’re mentioned:

“In the event of a power outage at the receiver end (when electronic methods are used), this system will be disabled and alternate methods of communication used.”

This suggests the alternate methods aren’t intended for use in the absence of a power outage. Try reading the procedure yourself and see what you think.

Going Full Court Press

We still believe what we wrote here on October 26, 2007 should be the guideline for UH's emergency alert system:

Any threat to the security of the campus community warranting an alert to students and faculty will be disseminated by all available means – text messaging, emails, loudspeakers in buildings and in the campus’s exterior spaces, and broadcasts over KTUH and the commercial stations.

Why WOULDN’T the University use all available means to send an emergency message? It's a slam-dunk certainty that the Emergency Notification System (using group telephone and email) won’t reach everyone. The campus radio station, in-building loud speakers, roving campus patrols with speakers and every other method must be used each and every time there’s a need to communicate about an on-campus crisis.

We just can't imagine it any other way. In fact, Tuesday’s test quite rightly should include ALL of those channels.

What we’d like to know – and will attempt to find out – is how many students and faculty are signed up for the emergency alert system using cell phones. Presuming it’s less than 100 percent, the University needs to take another hard look at its readiness to communicate with all audiences in an emergency.

Just as importantly, it must rid of itself of a mindset that seems fixated on TM and cell phone alerts.

Fall Is Here, Still No Storms; Keep 'em Crossed

Hawaii moved uneventfully from Summer to Fall yesterday, and we've still not recorded a storm of any size during the 2008 hurricane season.

As we all should remember, though, the season extends through November. Iwa in 1982 arrived two days before Thanksgiving, so wood-knocking is still advised.

We've not been posting here for several months simply because the emergency communications issues that originally prompted this blog have been absent, absent any reason to use emergency communications. We trust (for now) that the considerable thought and the millions of dollars that have gone into upgrading emergency response in this state have produced results.

That's something we'll be able to assess if and when storms do pay us a visit. For the record, we hope they don't.

$s for Emergency Foreign Language Broadcasts

Checking in with the Governor’s PR office can turn up something useful now and then, such as yesterday’s press release that she’s released money to local foreign language radio stations to aid communications during emergencies.

Radio stations KZOO and KNDI each is receiving $100,000 “to assist with the implementation of recommendations issued by the Governor’s Comprehensive Communications Review Committee (GCCRC) convened by Governor Lingle following the October 15, 2006 Kiholo Bay earthquakes.”

In case the GCCRC is new to you, here’s how the release describes the committee:

“Members of the Comprehensive Communications Review Committee included more than 100 government officials from state, county and federal agencies; owners, general managers and publishers from print, broadcast, radio and Internet media statewide; representatives from telecommunications providers; and editors and reporters who were ‘on the ground’ gathering information and reporting on the day of the earthquake.”

At the risk of seeming a tad churlish, we’ll point out one again – as we did when the committee was formed and repeatedly since then – that that the CCRC included nearly everyone but members of the public, the people who were ill-served by emergency communications and communicators after the earthquakes. It was a major oversight that never sank in with the CCRC’s leadership.

We continue to make the point that public should have been included on the CCRC, because the next time an after-action committee is formed to see what could be done to better serve Hawaii residents, the people should be included in the process.

Time To Dust Off Blog as 'cane Season Nears

Blogs that focus on one issue -- like this one and our Tsunami Lessons blog -- run the risk of losing steam and things to say once they've been said over and over again. And that's OK as long as the problems that originally prompted the blogs have been fixed.

We'd like to think Hawaii officials respond to emergencies better now than they did in October 2006 when we started CHORE. Same with our tsunami warning blog; we stopped posting there on the third anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, but you can bet we'll be back with more comment if PBS or the Discovery Channel show that "Wave that Shook the World" documentary again! (Read our 12/27/07 post to see what we mean.)

We've put CHORE on hold since early April, but we're nearing the six-month hurricane season in the Pacific. We hope nothing stronger than a gale blows this way, but if any of the three or four hurricanes predicted for the season do come close to Hawaii, we expect our officials to be 100-percent efficient in alerting the public and responding to the crisis.

And we'll probably have something to say about it here. For now, check out today's Honolulu Star-Bulletin editorial on hurricane season.

“Scream and Shout” Seems To Be Accepted Protocol to Get NG's Attention in a Flight Crisis

Air traffic controllers who need to alert military authorities about a possible in-flight emergency have been forewarned: Go crazy on the phone, maybe something like this:

“Hello, National Guard? Help, Help, HELP!!!"

Or so it would seem from the Associated Press story in today’s Honolulu Star-Bulletin. “There was no expression of concern….” says a military commander of the controllers’ call about the unresponsive go! airlines cockpit crew on February 13th.

The FAA is now investigating whether the pilots were asleep as the jet overflew its destination, and the Hawaii National Guard is sorting out its non-response to the FAA’s call that might have scrambled the Guard’s jets to investigate.

“If there’s a case of even a hint of a communications breakdown, we nave to solve this,” says the commander – something we’ve been saying since CHORE’s start.

Tsunami Warners Back Text Messaging for Hearing Impaired, but What’s the Backup?

Repeating the point of our February 29th post, text messaging has it place but is flawed as an emergency notification channel.  Now that the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center and State Civil Defense are pushing TM to alert the hearing impaired, we'll make the point again.

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin has a story today on Tsunami Awareness Month, and here's what it says about TM:

"A text messaging system also was created by Civil Defense to inform deaf people, government officials and emergency responders about a tsunami watch or warning.  The system involves sending text messages via e-mail, cellular phones and pagers.... so far, about 43 deaf people are in the system. Officials hope to increase that figure.  About $180,000 in funding was appropriated from the Department of Homeland Security for the pilot program...."

TM won't reach all hearing impaired, so once again we have reason to be wary when experts seem determined to see TM as "the answer" in emergency warning.  It isn't.  Officials need to keep working on backups so preparedness doesn't depend on cell phones and pagers working in an emergency for any segment of the population to be notified.  

Our limited perspective suggests that the hearing impaired should set up their own low-tech networks of neighbors, friends and relatives who can do what it takes to warn them after an alert is "sounded."